Download There is general agreement that the negative effects of global

Hurry Up Slowly—Building Social Infrastructure
as Adaptation to Climate Change in Developing Countries
Acknowledgments
This discussion paper was produced to initiate dialogue with practitioners during the Global Health
Council special session on June 2010 as well as with the SHOUT Group through a web discussion
hosted by the Center for Design and Research in Sustainability/Sustainable Health and Human
Development (CEDARS). You are invited to provide feedback and commentaries by visiting the CEDARS
web page, registering and visiting our Discussions Forum.
www.cedarscenter.com
Contact: [email protected]
Thanks to Cindy Young-Turner and Johanna Sarriot for editorial inputs, and to Marie Mikulak for graphic
design assistance. Thanks also to Jennifer Yourkavitch who provided critical feedback on the first draft
and led the presentation and discussion of the paper during the GHC special session.
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Hurry Up Slowly—Building Social Infrastructure
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Table of Contents
Executive Summary ......................................................................................................................................iii
Climate Change Scenarios .......................................................................................................................iii
Food Security: A Useful Analytical Lens ................................................................................................... v
Adaptation Strategies ................................................................................................................................ v
The Importance of Social Capital in Adaptation ...................................................................................... viii
Information-Based Decisionmaking .................................................................................................... viii
Lateral Learning and Sharing .............................................................................................................. viii
Conflict Resolution Mechanisms ......................................................................................................... viii
The “Non-Negotiables” for Building Social Infrastructure as Adaptation to Climate Change .................. ix
Conclusions and Discussion Questions ................................................................................................... ix
Background ................................................................................................................................................... 1
Approach/Method .......................................................................................................................................... 1
Three Global Climate Change Scenarios and Their Potential Effect on Food Security/Human Health ....... 2
Food Security: A Useful Analytical Lens ....................................................................................................... 4
Adaptation Strategies .................................................................................................................................... 7
The Development of Social Infrastructure for Adaptation: Building Social Capital for Collective Action
(Resilience) ................................................................................................................................................. 12
The Meaning of Social Capital ................................................................................................................ 12
Information-Based Decisionmaking ........................................................................................................ 13
Multi-Level Decisionmaking .................................................................................................................... 14
Opportunities for Lateral Learning and Sharing ...................................................................................... 15
Attention to Equity ................................................................................................................................... 16
Conflict Resolution Mechanisms ............................................................................................................. 16
Building Social Infrastructure—The “Nonnegotiables” ................................................................................ 17
Focus on Information for Decisionmaking ............................................................................................... 18
Time, Consistency, and Unity of Purpose ............................................................................................... 18
Clarity of Outcomes ................................................................................................................................. 19
Conclusions and Discussion Questions ...................................................................................................... 20
Reference List ............................................................................................................................................. 21
List of Tables
Table 1: Three Climate Change Scenarios and Their Potential Impact ....................................................... 3
Table 2: Suggestive Review of Global Factors Potentially Affecting Agricultural Output ............................. 6
Table 3: Expected Effect of Status Quo, Hard and Soft Adaptation Strategies at a Local Level ............... 11
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Executive Summary
There is general agreement that the negative effects of global climate change (GCC) are likely to be
experienced most by already-vulnerable populations in economically poor nations around the world.
While mitigation of the GCC risks remains a fundamental global priority, we focus on the adaptation
needs of vulnerable communities of developing countries. A great deal of uncertainty exists, however,
about the localized effects of climate change. We lay out a summary of a broad array of findings from the
available literature about the potential or probable effects of climate change in developing countries. We
then examine the respective merits of complementary types of adaptation strategies and seek to open a
debate about the urgency of social infrastructure development and the challenges it will bring to
development and adaptation efforts.
Climate Change Scenarios
A reading of the literature on climate change suggests three broad scenarios for how climate change will
affect vulnerable communities. These are presented in Table 1 along with a summary of their possible
impact on food security, health, and human development more generally:

There is great uncertainty about what progressive changes will mean for individual nations or
regions and about the exact timing and location of the extreme events. Negative impacts are
expected about health and food security, particularly the distribution and severity of changes in
food production and infectious agents and vectors’ prevalence. Other factors can modify effects
and responses to extreme events, such as economic growth or stagnation, as well as continued
growth in overall population.

The frequency of extreme events has already increased and is likely to increase further as the
impact of GCC is felt. Once again, this overall trend is difficult to link to specific projections at
regional and local levels, apart from specific geographic profiles such as lower elevation coastal
areas.

Less is known about “threshold” events, although there is historical evidence that these have
been important throughout human history. In a hyper-connected world, a crisis in one human
system can have negative synergies on other systems, with the risk of multi-system and
catastrophic failures (i.e., multiple extreme climate events with crop failures and concomitant
economic shocks and violent conflict).
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Table 1: Three Climate Change Scenarios and Their Potential Impact
Climate Change Scenario
Potential Health/Food Security and Other Impacts
1. Progressive climate change
(e.g., shifts in mean temperatures and rainfall
amounts, changes in lengths of growing seasons)
a.
b.
Probability profile:
Irregular (high variability) over short term;
incrementally significant over long term.
c.
d.
e.
f.
g.
h.
2. Extreme events
(e.g., floods, destructive wind storms, droughts,
climate induced fires)
Probability profile:
Already observable; increased frequency expected;
limited predictability at more local levels. Likely for
certain geographic profiles (lower elevation coastal
areas, etc.).
3. Threshold events or tipping points
(e.g., negative synergies with multi-system failures,
seen through historic events such as massive loss
of life in 16th century Mexico—reported in Global
Climate Change and Extreme Weather Events)
Probability profile:
Unpredictable—High Impact
Loss of coastal habitats reduce some food production activities.
Increased rainfall variability leads to decrease in water resources in
some locations and decreases irrigation potential with reduced
food production.
Increasing temperatures in many locations lead to more demand
for water for irrigation, thus leading to lower yields.
Mitigation efforts drive up input costs, reducing agricultural
productivity.
Change in range of infectious disease vectors.
Increase in respiratory illness due to changes in air quality.
Increased conflict due to resource competition
Increasing temperatures lead to heat stress on animal and fish
stocks, reducing fertility and increasing mortality.
a.
b.
c.
d.
e.
f.
g.
Heat-related deaths (heat wave).
Deaths and injury (flood, fire, storms).
Spread of infectious disease post-event (flood).
Spread of pests reducing food production (flood following drought).
Loss of cultivable land (flood/drought).
Loss of water resources (drought).
Heat-related stresses reduce cattle reproduction and increase
deaths.
a.
b.
c.
d.
e.
f.
Epidemics (cattle or human).
Crop failure (large scale).
Broad ecosystem collapse (leading to uninhabitable zones).
Economic crash due to systemic and multi-system spiraling effects.
Massive out-migration from affected zones.
Conflict (violence) due to migration and resource scarcity.
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Food Security: A Useful Analytical Lensi
When isolating the potential effects of different factors (such as climate change, economic growth or
stagnation, and population growth) that will interplay under any of the GCC scenarios and impact
agricultural output and food prices there is a near convergence of all factors on increasing the price of
food (see Table 2 in the main document).
Food security is a useful approach to examining the impacts of GCC because food security models, by
considering availability, accessibility, and utilization of food, provide a holistic way to assess the overall
“health” of communities.
A recent Journal of Nutrition supplement dedicated to examining the Impact of Climate Change, the
Economic Crisis and Food Prices on Nutrition, emphasizes three points which resonate with our own
research on the 2007-2008 combined food price, energy price, and financial crisis:

Preexisting and underlying chronic food insecurity leaves populations “disproportionately more
exposed to shocks.”

More important than the rural/urban split, vulnerability and poverty in either context lead to the
most negative impacts. Even short-term shocks can reduce households’ future livelihood
capabilities by degrading or destroying assets.

To household economics impact, we must add the national and global impact of resource shifting.
There will ultimately be competition for the same pot of resources, from environment protection,
climate change mitigation, response to financial and economic shocks, natural and man–made
disasters.
Adaptation Strategies
The ability of communities to adapt to local manifestations of GCC, by developing adaptive capacity and
resilience, can reduce the effects of the events associated with climate change.
Ayers discusses how adaptation investments should be additional to, or mainstreamed into traditional
development assistance. For the most part, however, the literature has so far focused on what the
additional adaptation efforts should address, and in so doing emphasized “hard” adaptation approaches
over “soft” (as discussed below).
Given the ongoing deficit in sustainable development processes within poor communities, we need to pay
attention to the risk of an adaptation “status quo” at community level and then examine hard and soft
adaptation approaches. While status quo is not an option for global planners, from a local perspective
The concept of “food security” is too often and narrowly associated with food production at national levels or “food
aid” responses. We adopt a more comprehensive definition: “Food security exists when all people, at all times, have
physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritional food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences
for an active and healthy life.” (FAO 1996) This definition embodies three key concepts: 1) food availability (which
includes local food production systems), 2) food access (including trade, wage income, intra-household distribution),
and 3) food utilization (mediated by health and infectious disease agents). Risk—aka vulnerability to food insecurity—
is borne by all components of the food security framework. A food security model thus provides a holistic way to
assess the overall “health” of communities.
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there is unfortunately plenty of evidence that status quo is a probabilistically-likely event due to the
continued challenges of bringing sustainable community development to the poorest, most vulnerable
parts of the world. Effective sustainable community development, or rather the lack thereof, is the first
source of vulnerability and food insecurity in the face of GCC.
A World Bank documentii is useful in delineating “hard” and “soft” adaptation approaches. Hard options
involve engineering actions such as: river and sea dikes, beach nourishment, port upgrades, rural roads,
irrigation infrastructure expansion and health infrastructure and delivery systems. Soft adaptation
measures, on the other hand, might include things such as early warning systems, community
preparedness programs, watershed management, urban and rural zoning, and water pricing. They rely on
effective equitable, local institutions enabling an adaptation process that is anticipatory, long-term,
strategic, cumulative, and supported by collective action.
Soft adaptation strategies raise the baseline status of communities and will provide for easier
implementation of solutions, to the extent they can draw on or expand traditional/local adaptation
strategies. Hard strategies leave substantial gaps in terms of adaptation and do not deal with the certainty
of negative outcomes that come from current development failures. They will be harder to implement
without advances on soft strategies, which include the development of strong local decisionmaking
structures, or, to return to the language of the authors of the World Bank study, “empowered
communities.”
Table 3 thus provides a rough summary of the costs and outcomes of different strategies in the face of
the three climate change scenarios seen earlier.
ii
The Costs to Developing Countries of Adapting to Climate Change: New Methods and Estimates (The Global
Report of the Economics of Adaptation to Climate Change Study Consultation Draft). World Bank.
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Table 3: Expected Effect of Status Quo, Hard and Soft Adaptation Strategies at a Local Level
Climate
Change
Scenario
Status Quo
Additional Cost: $0
Without action, human migration on a
large scale away from most affected
areas will result.
Well-off and middle-income groups will
be able to adapt at individual level, but
poorer individuals and communities will
1.
be highly affected. All health indices will
Progressive
either remain largely unchanged or
climate
regress in these populations.
change
Stress on middle-income groups will
deplete resources and push some into
poverty.
Focus on Hard Strategies
Additional Cost: $75–100 billion per
year
Given time and resources, these
strategies could help various
communities adapt to change. At issue
here is moving research rapidly from
theoretical to practical application and
finding ways to bring stakeholders
together to problem solve around local
management (a soft strategy).
Those working in the subsistence or
informal sectors may benefit only
secondarily if investments target most
‘productive’ sectors/approaches
Any increased conflict is likely to fall
more heavily on women and children.
Arguably, even the hard strategies will
require some investment in soft
strategies that build on community
decisionmaking structures.
These strategies will require a focus on
equity considerations (see below) if they
are to benefit traditionally
underrepresented populations (poor,
women, minorities).
To the extent they can draw on or
expand traditional/local adaptation
strategies, they will provide for easier
adaptation of solutions.
Will raise the baseline status of
communities.
Again, wealthier individual parts of
affected populations will be able to leave
or recover from extreme events in ways
that poorer groups cannot.
2.
Extreme
events
Focus on Soft Strategies
Additional Cost: Unknown
The fact that most of the kinds of events
envisioned here have already occurred or
occur with some regularity around the
world provides a blueprint for action, but
hard strategies are likely to be used after
Again, stress on groups will bring them to the fact.
lower economic strata.
If resources are available large-scale
Short-term problems of injury and loss of responses can target not only rebuilding
livelihood and assets will be compounded but also reinforcing structures.
by potential increased risks of infectious
disease and pest infestations.
In a sense this scenario would lead to
reactive hard strategies being employed:
Medium- or longer-term loss of
after a disaster one rebuilds and
productive assets will be a problem for reinforces to avoid similar problems
poorer parts of the population.
again.
As above, strong social networks and
decisionmaking structures can help
streamline decisionmaking post-event.
Using preexisting networks as early
warning channels is also a possibility, as
is using such networks to collect data
rapidly after events on those most
affected so aid can be rushed to them
(immediately) and rehabilitation can be
targeted after the fact.
However, this type of adaptation could
also consist of better warning systems
and ways to move people out of harm’s
way (as is the case for hurricane or
tornado warning systems in the United
States).
Mass out-migration would result with the
wealthier groups most likely to survive.
Poorer groups would face very high
mortality and/or experience IDP or
refugee status in poor health
3.
Threshold
events
May be difficult to reverse but will depend
on rushing, perhaps largely untested,
strategies to the field. Such “macro-level”
interventions would require massive
investments and be essentially enormous
‘terraforming’ engineering marvels
(e.g., dropping iron in the sea)
Such large-scale events are outside the
experience base of communities. While
collective action may be unable to enable
appropriate responses to them, soft
adaptation does move communities to a
better baseline. It connects vulnerable
groups to information. It increases their
resource base and increases resilience
and capacity to respond to a disaster.
Social capital also helps put the pieces
back together. Starting from a higher
baseline may ensure survival, whereas
baseline vulnerability leads to higher
mortality.
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The Importance of Social Capital in Adaptation
Following the literature, we describe three kinds of social capital (bonding, bridging, and linking) and how
they are expressed into adaptive capacity. An examination of the social capital literature as it applies to
development in general and climate change in particular suggests that community empowerment—via
social capital development—that builds adaptive capacity in the face of GCC and enables the
implementation of hard and soft strategies requires (1) information-based decisionmaking; (2) multi-level
decisionmaking and coordination of action; (3) opportunities for lateral learning and sharing; (4) attention
to equity not merely in assuring that vulnerable groups are “beneficiaries” but that they are “around the
table” at which decisions are made; and (5) conflict resolution mechanisms.
Information-Based Decisionmaking
Empowerment of communities requires that communities have full access to climate relevant information
systems. It also requires taking into account existing knowledge and coping strategies of the poor. Critical
elements of information use for decisionmaking include both its routine and consistent collection and
processes that allow people of varying education and experience levels to use it to track local changes in
food security. The information basis for adaptation to climate change thus appears to be—at the onset—
the same information basis for local sustainable development.
We would propose that local information systems include these three elements at least: community
diagnosis (to identify current coping mechanisms), community based information systems (food/livelihood
security indicators), and ongoing multi-dimensional assessments, from institutional assessments to more
comprehensive monitoring of the delivery and results achieved by basic social services (to enhance
quality and build credibility—see Hansen et al 2008)
Lateral Learning and Sharing
Lateral learning concerns bridging capital, and could focus on information sharing about the state of
knowledge on the probable effects of climate change. It might start with information sharing on the
existing threats to community health and livelihood. This entails bringing various communities together to
discuss current development challenges and consider the need for strengthened structures now and in
the future. Lateral learning sends a strong message that local experiences are valuable and that solutions
can be found within the local setting, while acknowledging that GCC could introduce events that go
beyond the capacity of the strategies that have evolved.
Conflict Resolution Mechanisms
The first reason that conflict resolution skills will be necessary is because one of the effects of GCC is
expected to be heightened tensions and conflicts over scarce resources. Thus, skills will required to both
create the spaces (creating safety for groups in conflict so they can come together) and to deal with
conflicts that will arise. Building trust, overcoming fear, and enabling decisionmaking within groups in
which power imbalances exist requires an attention to how power is being used to silence or exclude, to
name it and to address it. These elements are crucial to adaptive capacity.
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The “Non-Negotiables” for Building Social Infrastructure as Adaptation to
Climate Change
Given that the current “development deficit” in many communities (both in lower income and middle
income countries, in rural and in peri-urban communities) will lead to greater vulnerability under localized
phenomena due to GCC, we should begin to immediately fund efforts to create/mobilize bridging and
linking social capital. We suggest here some “non-negotiables” concerning that the nature of those
investments:
Time is a fundamental ingredient widely ignored by project approaches. Some learning and key
processes build and solidify over time, while projects are frequently operating on start-stop modes, which
bear substantial transaction costs (“start”) and opportunity costs (“stop”) in terms of human development.
In our experience, there are first indications that—given appropriate accountability and metrics of
progress—minimal investments maintained over time can contribute substantially to sustaining social
development processes and outcomes.
Two related concepts are also essential: unity of purpose, which refers to multiple actors focusing on
common goals, consistency of purpose over time, which should be expressed through clarity of
outcomes. The initial efforts to create social capital should focus on two distinct outcomes: creating
learning about adaptation strategies already in place to face uncertainty, and collecting data that identifies
levels and then trends in food insecurity in communities with an eye to setting targets and developing
plans to reduce it.
After clear goals and outcomes have been established, the local collection and use of primary data—
both qualitative and quantitative—must form the basis for building decisionmaking networks.
National and regional aggregate data simply do not suffice to guide effective strategies, even at district
level.(Sarriot et Jahan, 2010; Sarriot et al., 2008) We suggest that the food/livelihood security approaches
provide a useful starting place for answering information needs, including by more aggressively obtaining
local information. Efforts to create bridging and linking capital should not only consider the various kinds
of networks that need to be developed but also assure that “the poor” are not merely referred to in terms
of being “beneficiaries” but also included around the decisionmaking table in tangible ways.
Conclusions and Discussion Questions
No one trying to tackle the complexity of Global Climate Change, particularly in the context of ongoing
development challenges is going to believe in rapid, simple and easy “fixes.” One might argue that the
culture of easy fixes is partly to blame for anthropogenic Climate Change. By reviewing the literature
available to date, and mapping out scenarios for impact of GCC on local vulnerable communities, as well
as types of adaptation processes (or lack thereof) which can be promoted in these communities, we have
identified three salient ideas, which we suggest should guide new efforts to build adaptive
capacity/resiliency at local levels:
1. A collective deficit in enabling local, sustainable community development represents the most
widely shared source of insecurity and inadaptability among poor communities of developing
countries.
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2. Even context-specific, hard adaptation strategies will be hindered in their effectiveness and
impact in the absence of effective development processes focused on soft adaptation.
3. In the face of uncertainty, progressiveness, complexity and randomness of GCC threats,
sustainable adaptation processes should emphasize the building of a responsive and capable
social infrastructure. We suggest that proper respect for time as a factor of social processes, unity
and consistency of purpose demonstrated through appropriate local information systems and
metrics, and equity in bringing stakeholders around decisionmaking processes will be central to
these efforts.
We presented these analyses to stimulate debate and action. Leaving aside for a minute, “how things are
done in the business of development” to focus on what is really required, we submit the following
questions:
1. We emphasized the importance of food security systems, including livelihood and basic health
measures at the local level. As a development community, we have grown reticent to providing
some of this information at the local level. What are the essential information needs to be met
through the routine data systems, local surveys, surveillance, etc?
2. What role is there for mentors/coaches of adaptation processes if local ownership is to be
fostered? Would that be the role of development professionals and agencies as “outsiders,” and
can we even think of different ways to engage in development practice if adaptation and building
resiliency are critical concerns?
3. We have talked about a long-term process. How should we think about the timeline to put this
social infrastructure into place?
The final question is common to all discussion groups:
4. What innovative proposition would you put forth to advance adaptation to Global Climate Change
among vulnerable communities of developing countries?
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Background
There is general agreement that the negative effects of global climate change (GCC) are likely to be
experienced most by already vulnerable populations in economically poor nations around the world.
The IPCC 4th Assessment Report (Easterling et al., 2007) states:
“Smallholder and subsistence farmers, pastoralists and artisanal fisherfolk will suffer complex,
localized impacts of climate change (high confidence). These groups, whose adaptive capacity is
constrained, will experience the negative effects on yields of low-latitude crops, combined with a
high vulnerability to extreme events… Climate-change models project that those likely to be
adversely affected are the regions already most vulnerable to food insecurity, notably Africa,
which may lose substantial agricultural land… Weak public-health systems and limited access to
primary health care contribute to high levels of vulnerability and low adaptive capacity for
hundreds of millions of people.”
These populations are not part of global GCC mitigation efforts, but such efforts will affect them, as will
climate change itself, for such populations confronting GCC will require adaptation in order to build
resilience in the face of change. An examination of the growing literature on climate change and
adaptation reveals a great deal of uncertainty about the localized effects of climate change, even as there
is much agreement on which groups are and will be most vulnerable and for whom adaptation will be
most difficult. Perhaps because of this there is little discussion about what localized adaptation might look
like or how it can be supported. Recent international conferences have debated national- or regional-level
mitigation commitments. Much less is said about what will be necessary to support robust localized
adaptation.
Approach/Method
Based on a review of the likelihood and impact of forthcoming changes, we lay out a summary of a broad
array of findings about the potential or probable effects of climate change in developing countries.
We propose that such effects be examined in terms of their probable impact on food security1 for reasons
presented in the following sections.
F
We then seek to summarize the meaning and effects of various adaptation strategies on these
populations. Next, we propose an approach to enable vulnerable groups to build a more robust and
localized social infrastructure to prepare to adapt to the effects of GCC. This approach is based on
supporting the development of various forms of social capital within and between communities, with an
eye to creating equitable decisionmaking structures and enabling these structures to deal effectively with
conflict. We close the paper by proposing some factors that are key for building this social infrastructure
and with questions about the most effective way forward.
1
We adopt a comprehensive definition of food security, which goes beyond food production and aid. See textbox in
the Food Security: A Useful Analytical Lens Section.
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Three Global Climate Change Scenarios and Their Potential
Effect on Food Security/Human Health
A reading of the literature on climate change—see especially IPCC 4th Assessment Report and the
Global Climate Change and Extreme Weather Events: Understanding the Contributions to Infectious
Disease Emergence (Pachauri and Reisinger, 2007; Relman et al., 2008)—suggests three broad
scenarios for how climate change will proceed. These are presented in Table 1, along with a summary of
their possible impacts upon food security and, more generally, health and human development.2 Note that
these impacts concern primarily the most vulnerable populations described above.
F
While there is consensus that GCC will lead to an overall warming of the earth over time and that extreme
events will increase along with these changes, there is great uncertainty about what the progressive
changes will mean for individual nations or regions. There is also uncertainty about the exact timing and
location of the extreme events (with the exception of the effects of warming on coastal habitat and
ecology, which can be anticipated with more certainty).
There is great uncertainty about the health and food security impacts of GCC. Again, while there is high
certainty that extreme events will lead to decreases in food production in areas affected by them (Bloem
et al., 2010; USAID, 2007; Metz et al., 2007), and there is the potential for increases and spread of
infectious diseases, 3 how specific nations and regions will fare is poorly understood. Thus, while the
potential for great changes in food production (for example) exist, and infectious agents and vectors could
change, there is no current knowledge about the distribution and severity of these kinds of changes.
The frequency of extreme events has already increased and is likely to increase further as the impact of
GCC is felt. Once again, this overall trend is difficult to link to specific projections at regional and local
levels, apart from specific geographic profiles such as lower elevation coastal areas.
F
F
While uncertainty is high about the occurrence of specific events, their possible consequences can be
informed by proxy experiences of the past, which have been examined and studied, such as—

El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) on the transmission of vector- and non-vector-borne
diseases (Relman et al., 2008).

The 2007–2008 food price crisis combined with an energy price hike and a global financial
collapse (Cederstrom et al., 2009; Christian, 2010; Bloem et al., 2010).

Larger human impacts—such as displacement and conflict—which occur frequently even if
caused by stressors of a different nature.
Note that we have not attached “likelihood” estimates for these impacts. The IPCC 4th Assessment (and other
documents noted in the appendix) address some of these, but the key is that virtually no statements of this kind can
be made for individual regions or nations—let alone at the sub-national level, which is our focus. However, we do
believe that the potential impacts listed here are broadly supported by climate change modeling activities.
The problem, as noted in the Global Climate Change and Extreme Weather Events document, is that there are many
pitfalls in extrapolating climate and disease; and (we would add) other relationships from one spatial level or temporal
scale to another.
3 The literature (Relman et al., 2008) notes the following in relation to infectious diseases: overall increase in burden
(consensus), but case-by-case it is hard to predict; shifts in the distribution is an almost certain outcome; shifts will be
affected by acceleration in prevention and control measures.
2
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
Regional droughts (such as in the Sahel in the 1980s) and other climate-related events of much
more localized occurrence such as typhoons, hurricanes, tornados, and floods.
Less is known about threshold events, although there is historical evidence (Relman et al., 2008) that
these have been important throughout human history. In a hyper-connected world, a crisis in one human
system can have negative synergies on other systems, with the risk of multi-system and catastrophic
failure (i.e., multiple extreme climate events with crop failures and concomitant economic shocks, as well
as violent conflict). 4
F
Table 1: Three Climate Change Scenarios and Their Potential Impact
Climate Change Scenario
Potential Health/Food Security and Other Impacts
1. Progressive climate change
(e.g., shifts in mean temperatures and rainfall
amounts, changes in lengths of growing seasons)
a.
b.
Probability profile:
Irregular (high variability) over short term;
incrementally significant over long term.
c.
d.
e.
f.
g.
h.
2. Extreme events
(e.g., floods, destructive wind storms, droughts,
climate induced fires)
Probability profile:
Already observable; increased frequency expected;
limited predictability at more local levels. Likely for
certain geographic profiles (lower elevation coastal
areas, etc.).
3. Threshold events or tipping points
(e.g., negative synergies with multi-system failures,
seen through historic events such as massive loss
of life in 16th century Mexico—reported in Global
Climate Change and Extreme Weather Events)
Probability profile:
Unpredictable—High Impact
Loss of coastal habitats reduce some food production activities.
Increased rainfall variability leads to decrease in water resources in
some locations and decreases irrigation potential with reduced
food production.
Increasing temperatures in many locations lead to more demand
for water for irrigation, thus leading to lower yields.
Mitigation efforts drive up input costs, reducing agricultural
productivity.
Change in range of infectious disease vectors.
Increase in respiratory illness due to changes in air quality.
Increased conflict due to resource competition
Increasing temperatures lead to heat stress on animal and fish
stocks, reducing fertility and increasing mortality.
a.
b.
c.
d.
e.
f.
g.
Heat-related deaths (heat wave).
Deaths and injury (flood, fire, storms).
Spread of infectious disease post-event (flood).
Spread of pests reducing food production (flood following drought).
Loss of cultivable land (flood/drought).
Loss of water resources (drought).
Heat-related stresses reduce cattle reproduction and increase
deaths.
a.
b.
c.
d.
e.
f.
Epidemics (cattle or human).
Crop failure (large scale).
Broad ecosystem collapse (leading to uninhabitable zones).
Economic crash due to systemic and multi-system spiraling effects.
Massive out-migration from affected zones.
Conflict (violence) due to migration and resource scarcity.
Risk Management “Science” has made forays into the public consciousness through recent publications, such as
The Black Swan: The Impact of Unprobable Events (Taleb, 2007), which provides useful discussions on management
of the risks of unpredictable system failures.
4
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While these events provide data on both the effects and responses to events (whether progressive,
extreme, or threshold), other factors can modify their effect in given areas and over time. These include,
among others, economic growth or stagnation and population growth. While population growth rates are
in rapid decline, population momentum ensures continued growth in overall population for the coming
generation and beyond. The reality of the business cycle—amplified through highly integrated product
and financial markets—also modifies the effects of climate change in complex ways given the link
between economic growth (or stagnation) and research and development of new technologies that affect
food production and the prevention and treatment of infectious diseases.
Food Security: A Useful Analytical Lens
What is food security?
The concept of food security is too often and narrowly associated with food production at national
levels or ‘food aid’ responses. We adopt a more comprehensive definition: “Food security exists when
all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritional food to
meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.” (FAO, 1996) This
definition embodies three key concepts: (1) food availability (which includes local food production
systems), (2) food access (including trade, wage income, intra-household distribution), and (3) food
utilization (mediated by health and infectious disease agents). Risk—or vulnerability to food
insecurity—is borne by all components of the food security framework. A food security model thus
provides a holistic way to assess the overall health of communities.
When isolating the potential effects of different factors (such as climate change, economic growth or
stagnation, and population growth) that will interplay under any of the GCC scenarios and impact
agricultural output and food prices, there is a near convergence of all factors on increasing the price of
food (see Table 2).
The Journal of Nutrition dedicated a supplement (Bloem et al., 2010) to examining the “Impact of Climate
Change, the Economic Crisis and Food Prices on Malnutrition.” The experts, gathered in Castel Gandolfo,
offer a large number of papers and analyses, some of which resonate with our own research, conducted
for UNICEF in the Middle East and North Africa Region (Cederstrom et al., 2009):

Preexisting and underlying chronic food insecurity leaves populations “disproportionately more
exposed to shocks” (Bloem et al., 2010).

More important than the rural/urban split, vulnerability and poverty in either context lead to the
most negative impacts. Even short-term shocks can reduce households’ future livelihood
capabilities by degrading or destroying assets.

To household economics impact, we must add the national and global impact of resource shifting.
There will ultimately be competition for the same pot of resources, from environment protection,
climate change mitigation, response to financial and economic shocks, natural, and man-made
disasters. If we have not developed sustainable systems under high ODA funding, where will that
leave us when resources dry out? The Gandolfo Group’s analyses suggest that the recent food,
fuel, and financial crises “will likely undo much of the progress toward the Millennium
Development Goals” (Sari et al., 2010).
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
At a national level, governments do not necessarily choose either efficient or sustainable
solutions faced with a crisis. In our research, for example, all MENA countries subsidized grain
imports in 2008 at a huge cost, reducing resources available for basic services, especially in poor
communities.
Food security is also a useful approach to examining the impacts of GCC. Food security models, with
their consideration of availability of food (which includes local food production systems), access to food
(including trade, wage income, and intra-household distribution), and utilization of food (mediated by
health and infectious disease agents), provides a holistic way to assess the overall health of communities.
(See food security textbox above.)
We will argue that enabling communities to track changes in food security via simple, local information
systems, in order to develop responses to it, is critical to laying the groundwork for more effective
adaptation in the face of GCC while helping them address current vulnerabilities.
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Table 2: Suggestive Review of Global Factors Potentially Affecting Agricultural Output
Factors Affecting
Agricultural Output
Climate Change
Economic Growth (Global)
Economic Stagnation
(Global)
Population Growth
Water Availability

In many areas

Implies that growth provides
for better water use via
investment in better
technologies
/
Current water-saving
infrastructure not
maintained; no new finds to
increase availability

Land Availability
/
The exact outcome could
depend on the distribution of
catastrophic events
(floods/droughts) and their
duration

Implies that growth provides
for better land use via
investment in better
technologies


Fertilizer Prices

This assumes that rich
country mitigation efforts
increase cost of carbon
emission and thus prices rise
due to ‘taxes’ on natural gas
/
Outcome depends on prices
for natural gas
/
Global population growth
is putting pressure on all
natural resources
Improved Seed
Varieties
Availability
?
Human Labor
/
Labor pushed off land by
climate-related catastrophes
in worst case and health of
labor worse off
/
Less critical to production
but growth could stimulate
greater migration; however,
labor via potentially
healthier
Petroleum Prices
(assumes greater
mechanization in
agriculture is
pushed)

This assumes that rich
country mitigation efforts
increase cost of carbon
emission and thus prices rise
due to ‘taxes’ on petroleum

Increase in price of
petroleum with economic
expansion
/
/
Global population growth
is putting pressure on all
natural resources
World Market
Integration
?

Generally growth in trade
enables (and is enabled by)
economic growth

Generally stagnation leads
to more protectionism
?
Could lead to more
integration via migration
as has been happening
Food Production
Summary


/


Increase in price of natural
gas with economic
expansion (mitigated
perhaps by newer finds now
exploitable due to price
increases)

Investment in agriculture
possible
/
Investment in agriculture
limited
/
Labor more critical to
production but destitution
could still push people to
urban areas; also, labor is
not as healthy, so even
more labor may not lead to
true increases
?
/
Population growth has led
to migration away from
land, but enough may stay
to have little effect; labor
health likely worse
Attendant Potential Impact on Food Prices of Each Factor Given the Foregoing
Food Prices

The picture here is
unambiguous: factor prices
increase; land and water are
less available. Less food is
produced. Prices will go up.
Urban poor hurt most, but
rural peasants also potentially
hurt by high input prices and
increasing competition for
land and water.
/
Arguments could go either
way: factor prices rise but
other inputs used more
‘efficiently.’ Most expect
more food to be produced
given general changes in
technology. Not captured
above is the use of food
crops for biofuels, which
increases input costs even
more. Also, while global
integration promises lower
food prices, the last food
crisis shows this is not
necessarily the case.

There appear to be few who
think prices will decline even
with economic stagnation.
This is due to greater
migration out of agriculture,
less investment in
agriculture, and more
protectionism. At best, food
prices stabilize. Rural poor
no worse off but urban poor
dependent on imports and
‘off the farm’ suffer more.

Population growth alone
has the potential to place
greater pressure on
natural resources and has
been leading to greater
urban migration. Rural
poor bear brunt of
increases.
Legend:  = Declines/Decreases;  = Goes up/Increases;  = Neutral; ? = Unknown/Unsure
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Adaptation Strategies
Smit and Pilifosova (2001) state, “Adaptation refers to adjustments in ecological, social, or economic
systems in response to actual or expected climatic stimuli and their effects or impacts. It refers to changes
in processes, practices, and structures to moderate potential damages or to benefit from opportunities
associated with climate change.” Their chapter provides an excellent review of the literature on
adaptation, and we summarize only a few key points here:

Not surprisingly, “underdevelopment fundamentally constrains adaptive capacity, especially
because of a lack of resources to hedge against extreme but expected events.” Adaptive capacity
is defined as building “the potential or capability of a system to adapt to (to alter to better suit)
climatic stimuli or their effects or impacts.” This is also referred to as building resilience. Not
surprisingly, “Activities required for the enhancement of adaptive capacity are essentially
equivalent to those promoting sustainable development.”

“Some people regard the adaptive capacity of a system as a function not only of the availability of
resources but of access to those resources by decision makers and vulnerable subsectors of a
population” and “the presence of power differentials can contribute to reduced adaptive capacity.”

“In general, countries with well-developed social institutions are considered to have greater
adaptive capacity than those with less effective institutional arrangements—commonly,
developing nations and those in transition.”
These points focus on a number of key elements related to the ability of communities to adapt to local
manifestations of GCC—especially those that concern “underdevelopment and the need for social
infrastructure.”
A World Bank report (2009) states:
Our combined experience suggests that the best way to address climate change impacts
on the poor is by integrating adaptation measures into sustainable development and
poverty reduction strategies… Many adaptation mechanisms will be strengthened by
making progress in areas such as good governance, human resources, institutional
structures, public finance, and natural resource management. Such progress builds the
resilience of countries, communities, and households to all types of shocks, including
climate change impacts…
In effect, this argues that building the social infrastructure of communities enhances their capacity to
respond and is thus, in itself, the beginning of an adaptation that is intentional, anticipatory, long-term,
strategic, and cumulative. The WB document is one of the few that attempts to estimate the global costs
of adaptation to climate change and is useful in delineating “hard” and “soft” adaptation approaches.

Hard options involve acts of engineering such as river and sea dikes, beach nourishment, port
upgrades, rural roads, irrigation infrastructure expansion, and improvement of health
infrastructure and delivery systems.
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
Soft adaptation measures, on the other hand, might include things such as early warning
systems, community preparedness programs, watershed management, urban and rural zoning,
and water pricing. They rely on effective institutions supported by collective action.
Adapting to risk scenarios has costs—some of which are estimated in the literature and others that are
not. The World Bank authors, referring to hard options, put their cost “between 2010 and 2050 of adapting
to an approximately 2oC warmer world by 2050 in the range of $75 billion to $100 billion a year.” No
similar estimate is made for soft options.
While a number of authors (The World Bank, 2009; Ayers et al., 2009; USAID, 2007) acknowledge the
nonnegotiable necessity of soft adaptation to improve human health and welfare, with or without climate
change shocks (“no regrets strategies”), and to create conditions for effective hard adaptation measures,
most of the climate change and health literature of recent years has focused (for partly justifiable reasons)
on the need for new and hard strategies, and additional adaptation strategies and investments.
Soft options are probably addressed less frequently because they may be considered part of the
underlying development requirements, as summarized by Ayers and others (2009):
Given that a community that is vulnerable in an existing climate is likely to be vulnerable
to future climate change, it is not necessary to wait for climate change data to become
available to start building adaptive capacity. Rather, the starting point for vulnerability
reduction is development, and so the priorities for any development agency must first be
meeting their existing aid commitments and focusing on community priorities in the nearterm. Mainstreaming will not be effective if existing development trajectories are
inconsistent with the objectives of adaptation, so first and foremost a “more of the same”
approach to development must form the underlying basis for any adaptation program
undertaken by development agencies.
Soft adaptation strategies raise the baseline status of communities and will provide for easier
implementation of solutions, to the extent they can draw on or expand traditional/local adaptation
strategies (see following figure). Hard strategies leave substantial gaps in terms of adaptation and do not
deal with the certainty of negative outcomes that come from current development failures. They will be
harder to implement without advances on soft strategies, which include the development of strong local
decisionmaking structures or, to return to the language of the authors of the World Bank study,
“empowered communities.” In a paper on community-based adaptation to the health impacts of climate
change, Ebi and Semenza (2008) note the importance of what is needed in comparison to the current
situation:
The focus has been on interventions that are the responsibility of national and state
public health agencies. Although these interventions are critical, they will not be sufficient,
even with optimal resources and engagement. Additional activities will need to be taken
by individuals within their communities.
Considering what the adaptation strategies might lead to, in terms of helping people adapt to climate
change, affects how we can value the two different approaches. Table 3 provides a rough summary of the
costs and outcomes of hard and soft strategies in the face of the three climate change scenarios seen
earlier. We present this table not only to demonstrate the timing and potential use of hard and soft
adaptation approaches to GCC but also to highlight two other points:
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Hurry Up Slowly—Building Social Infrastructure
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
Given the ongoing deficit in emergency of sustainable development processes within poor
communities, we need to pay attention to the risk of an adaptation status quo at the community
level and then examine hard and soft adaptation approaches. While status quo is not an option
for global planners, from a local perspective there is unfortunately plenty of evidence that status
quo is a probabilistically likely event due to the continued challenges of bringing sustainable
community development to the poorest, most vulnerable parts of the world. As stated repeatedly,
effective sustainable community development or lack thereof is the first source of vulnerability
and food insecurity in the face of GCC.

Both hard and soft adaptation both require empowerment of local communities to assess needs,
use information, and plan for action. While empowerment is a difficult concept to define,
assessment, information use, and planning can only be conducted in the context of strong and
inclusive local institutions. Unfortunately, even in the context of increased ODA funding, current
development efforts rarely focus on investing resources in the building of such localized social
infrastructure.
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Hurry Up Slowly—Building Social Infrastructure
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Table 3: Expected Effect of Status Quo, Hard and Soft Adaptation Strategies at a Local Level
Climate
Change
Scenario
Status Quo
Additional Cost: $0
Focus on Hard Strategies
Additional Cost: $75–100 billion per
year
Without action, human migration on a
Given time and resources, these
large scale away from most affected
strategies could help various communities
areas will result.
adapt to change. At issue here is moving
research rapidly from theoretical to
Well-off and middle-income groups will be practical application and finding ways to
able to adapt at individual level, but
bring stakeholders together to problem
poorer individuals and communities will solve around local management (a soft
1.
be highly affected. All health indices will strategy).
Progressive
either remain largely unchanged or
climate
regress in these populations.
Those working in the subsistence or
change
informal sectors may benefit only
Stress on middle-income groups will
secondarily if investments target most
deplete resources and push some into
“productive” sectors/approaches.
poverty.
Any increased conflict is likely to fall more
heavily on women and children.
3.
Threshold
events
Arguably, even the ‘hard strategies’ will
require some investment in soft strategies
that build on community decisionmaking
structures.
These strategies will require a focus on
equity considerations (see below) if they
are to benefit traditionally
underrepresented populations (poor,
women, minorities).
To the extent they can draw on or expand
traditional/local adaptation strategies, they
will provide for easier adaptation of
solutions.
Will raise the baseline status of
communities.
Again, wealthier individual parts of
affected populations will be able to leave
or recover from extreme events in ways
that poorer groups cannot.
2.
Extreme
events
Focus on Soft Strategies
Additional Cost: Unknown
The fact that most of the kinds of events
envisioned here have already occurred or
occur with some regularity around the
world provides a blueprint for action, but
hard strategies are likely to be used after
Again, stress on groups will bring them to the fact.
lower economic strata.
If resources are available large-scale
Short-term problems of injury and loss of responses can target not only rebuilding
livelihood and assets will be compounded but also reinforcing structures.
by potential increased risks of infectious
disease and pest infestations.
In a sense this scenario would lead to
“reactive” hard strategies being employed:
Medium- or longer-term loss of productive after a disaster one rebuilds and
assets will be a problem for poorer parts reinforces to avoid similar problems again.
of the population.
However, this type of adaptation could
also consist of better warning systems
and ways to move people out of harm’s
way (as is the case for hurricane or
tornado warning systems in the United
States).
As above, strong social networks and
decisionmaking structures can help
streamline decisionmaking post-event.
Mass out-migration would result with the
wealthier groups most likely to survive.
Poorer groups would face very high
mortality and/or experience IDP or
refugee status in poor health
Such large-scale events are outside the
experience base of communities. While
collective action may be unable to enable
appropriate responses to them, soft
adaptation does move communities to a
better baseline. It connects vulnerable
groups to information. It increases their
resource base and increases resilience
and capacity to respond to a disaster.
May be difficult to reverse but will depend
on rushing, perhaps largely untested,
strategies to the field. Such “macro-level”
interventions would require massive
investments and be essentially enormous
“terraforming” engineering marvels
(e.g., dropping iron in the sea).
Using preexisting networks as early
warning channels is also a possibility, as
is using such networks to collect data
rapidly after events on those most
affected so aid can be rushed to them
(immediately) and rehabilitation can be
targeted after the fact.
Social capital also helps put the pieces
back together. Starting from a higher
baseline may ensure survival, whereas
baseline vulnerability leads to higher
mortality.
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The Development of Social Infrastructure for Adaptation:
Building Social Capital for Collective Action (Resilience)
The idea of empowering local communities is not a new one in development work, but what it means and
how to promote it are questions that merit further exploration and development. Conceptually, it is useful
to think about empowerment 7 as taking place via the development of social infrastructure—which is
referred to in the literature as the formation or mobilization of social capital.
F
F
An examination of the social capital literature as it applies to development in general (Woolcock, 1998)
and climate change in particular 8 suggests that community empowerment—via social capital
development—that builds adaptive capacity in the face of GCC and enables the implementation of hard
and soft strategies requires the following: (1) information-based decisionmaking; (2) multi-level
decisionmaking and coordination of action; (3) opportunities for lateral learning and sharing; (4) attention
to equity not merely in ensuring that vulnerable groups are “beneficiaries” but that they are “around the
table” at which decisions are made; and (5) conflict resolution mechanisms.
F
F
The Meaning of Social Capital
Ebi and Semenza (2008) provide a useful reminder of the meaning of social capital, describing it as “the
potential embedded in social relationships that enables residents to coordinate community action to
achieve shared goals, such as adaptation to climate change.” They go on to define briefly three wellknown forms that social capital takes: bonding, bridging, and linking capital. Bonding capital enables
communities to mobilize based on the deep relationships of trust that exist within largely homogeneous
groups. Bridging capital refers to the resource for action derived from heterogeneous groups joining
together to build relationships that bring capacities to the table that might be lacking within homogeneous
groups. Linking capital concerns relationships that extend beyond community groups, connecting such
groups to individuals and groups of power (for example the state in its various manifestations).
Elbie and Semenza note that all three forms of social capital are critical to enabling communities to adapt
to climate change. Woolcock (1998), writing more generally about the role of social capital and
development notes the same things and goes further, pointing out the development challenges that exist
if various forms of capital are lacking. He uses these two concepts to argue that both are necessary for
“bottom-up” development efforts to succeed. His arguments join Ebi and Semenza’s (2008) who make
this argument explicitly in relation to climate change when he notes that even high levels of bonding
capital quickly reach a self-limiting role in development because homogeneous groups often lack
essential skills and experiences to face the challenges of poverty. In addition, Woolcock talks about the
problem of too little bonding capital, examples of which exist in post-conflict environments, where basic
lack of trust within groups renders communal action difficult. For both groups of authors, finding ways to
support the development of bonding and bridging capital is critical for local efforts—be they general
development or adaptation to the local effects of GCC.
7
We use this term to refer to the process by which people come to achieve more control over their own
decisionmaking and future goals.
8 We draw primarily from numerous authors for these concepts (Ebi and Semenza, 2008; Thomas and Twyman,
2005; Tompkins and Adger, 2004).
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However, both also see the necessity of moving beyond these critical, local types of social capital to
linking communities to those “in power,” also known as linking capital. Elbie and Semenza limit their
consideration to the importance of linking capital, which is essentially about creating collaborative efforts
between community groups and those in power (health, administrative, and political authorities).
Woolcock concurs, calling this type of capital “synergy,” but goes a step further and notes that another
type of social capital is critical to ensure useful “top-down” development efforts. He adds that credibility
and capacity (technical and experiential) of state and civil society institutions are vital for top-down
approaches to development in order to work and to effectively marry top-down and bottom-up
approaches. 9
F
While examples of bonding and bridging capital are easy to find, there would appear to be a deficit of
experience in successfully developing linking capital. One possible example comes from the
USAID-funded UPHOLD project to develop a response to HIV/AIDS transmission in Uganda (Orobaton et
al., 2007). That project focused explicitly on creating linking capital through trust building activities. It also
had components related to credibility by facilitating processes with district health officials and others to
build shared values and build skills.
We turn now to examine briefly certain specific elements critical of creating/mobilizing social capital.
Information-Based Decisionmaking
As the World Bank’s The Costs to Developing Countries of Adapting to Climate Change: New Methods
and Estimates notes (2009), empowerment of communities requires that communities have full access to
climate-relevant information systems. In addition, the report states that “effective adaptation should build
upon, and sustain, existing livelihoods and thus take into account existing knowledge and coping
strategies of the poor.” This obviously does not deny the role of professionals, technicians, or experts, but
resets the focus of expertise toward the production of actionable information.
Taken together, these two points indicate the importance of collecting and using relevant climate
information and the experiences of local adaptation to enable decisionmaking about current and future
adaptation needs. As we argued above, a food security perspective has the potential to encompass both
of these broad types of information. The keys to information use for decisionmaking include both its
routine and consistent collection and processes that allow people of varying education and experience
levels to use it to track local changes in food security.
Devereux et al. (2004) are not writing within the context of GCC but discuss the use of a food
security/livelihood approach to data collection that has historically been used in regions of the world in
which extremes of climate variability are the norm (the likely reality of a world in which the fuller effects of
climate change have occurred, as we have seen in the second GCC scenario above). While their paper,
ironically, deals with scaling up such information systems to the national scale, the system they describe
has been designed to enable the local collection and use of information on food and livelihood security.
9
These concepts in the literature echo some of our own experiences. Examples of bridging capital, for example,
come from the world of microfinance in the idea of rotating savings and credit groups or federations of credit groups.
Linking between community groups and decisionmakers was at the heart of remarkable and, to a high extent,
sustainable achievements of an urban health project of Concern Worldwide in Bangladesh (Sarriot et al., 2004;
Sarriot and Jahan, 2010). Both linking and bridging social capital were at play in projects we evaluated, namely of
Save the Children USA in Guinea (Sarriot, 2006) and through the Living University model.
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Many of the data points collected in such systems concern climate-related issues such as local rainfall.
They go beyond this information, however, to examine broader issues of access to food and the tracking
of vulnerable groups. There is clearly much to be learned from these approaches.
While current approaches to tracking climate change focus on national- or even international-level data
collection and modeling, tools exist that permit communities (think “district” level) to collect data rapidly
and efficiently (Davis et al., 2009). We would argue that there are no inherent technical or procedural
challenges to enabling communities to gather and analyze local data to inform decisionmaking about
global climate change. Indeed, as we have argued, there is nothing standing in the way of helping
communities to do this in the current environment of food insecurity in which they find themselves.
What is lacking is the commitment to capacity building over time.
However, as noted, the food/livelihood security information systems are not the only kind of information to
be collected and analyzed. All societies have ways of adapting to climatic (and other) shocks and while
most writers agree (Tompkins and Adger, 2004) that the challenges of adapting to future climate change
lie outside their experienced coping range, learning of and adapting these coping mechanisms will be
critical to ongoing adaptation efforts. Bhattamishra and Barrett (2010), though not writing in the context of
GCC, provide a useful summary of community-based risk management actions (CBRMA) illustrating how
they exist in many places. Other studies cited in their paper illustrate the vast array of strategies used—
often in the context of climatic shocks.
Given the foregoing we would propose that local information systems include these three elements at
least:
1. Community diagnosis (to identify current coping mechanisms).
2. Community-based information systems (food/livelihood security indicators).
3. Ongoing multidimensional assessments, from institutional assessments—to build credibility
(Orobaton et al., 2007)—to more comprehensive monitoring of the delivery and results achieved
by basic social services.
The tools for collecting information at local levels meet with professional-cultural reluctance for their
implementation, but they are well established and proven to be workable at the district level. What is less
clear is, again, how to develop processes to enable emerging groups to analyze and then use data to
make decisions; more work needs to be done to create these processes. Despite this challenge the key
will be to develop routine data collection systems and to consistently, over long periods, help groups meet
to analyze data and progress toward goals (see below).
Multi-Level Decisionmaking
The foregoing assumes that information will be used in ongoing ways to make decisions about current
food security and community health challenges, and that the processes so developed will build the
adaptive capacity of communities. The idea of multi-level decisionmaking is merely another way of talking
about linking capital or synergy.
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What specific structures are needed? Tompkins and Adger (2004) argue for a model that operationalizes
Woolcock’s (1998) concept of synergy in the form of “co-management,” which they link to the idea of
“networks of engagement,” which give people access to power and representation. Quoting Ostrom
(1990), they state:
Co-management is one form of collective action whereby resource stakeholders work
together with a government agency to undertake some aspect of resource management.
Collective action in this context is the coordination of efforts among groups of individuals
to achieve a common goal when individual self-interest would be inadequate to achieve
the desired outcome.
Tompkins and Adger go on to acknowledge that “inclusive institutions and the sharing of responsibility for
natural resources go against the dominant hierarchical institutional forms of most governments
throughout the world.” They do, however, provide examples in their article of where co-management is
working.
What this implies is that the specific form of synergy must involve private actors (communities) working
explicitly with government agents to develop adaptation strategies (starting with a response to current
food security challenges). The same authors speak of the need to “cement localized spaces of
dependence.” This echoes the longstanding research of Kurt Lewin on how the formation of new groups
enables significant behavior change by members.
Opportunities for Lateral Learning and Sharing
The issue of lateral learning concerns bridging capital and, perhaps, provides as answer to the question:
Where does one start the process of co-management? As we have seen, bridging capital is a necessary
but not sufficient condition for increasing adaptive capacity of communities. It is important for moving
beyond the limitations of bonding capital—especially in the face of the local manifestations of GCC—but
requires linking capital to move toward realistic solutions to poverty and GCC’s effects.
Lateral learning could begin by focusing on information sharing about the state of knowledge on the
probable effects of climate change (acknowledging the great uncertainty that exists at national and local
levels). In a sense this concerns bringing various communities together to discuss current development
challenges and consider the need for strengthened structures now and in the future.
Beyond this, forming networks should catalogue already existing adaptation strategies that groups use to
adapt to risk. Bhattamishra and Barrett (2010) provide a useful summary of community-based risk
management actions illustrating how they exist in many places. One challenge they acknowledge—and
that could offer a second stage of questions for local groups to deal with—is the problem that most
CBRMAs don’t work well in cases of broad co-varying risks—the kinds that are going to be common in
GCC-induced events. Thus, emerging social structures should be enabled to both critically examine local
adaptation strategies that could be useful models, but also consider their limitations and the opportunities
to build relationships beyond them.
Lateral learning sends a strong message that local experiences are valuable and that solutions can be
found within the local setting while acknowledging that GCC could introduce events that go beyond the
capacity of the strategies that have evolved. Because it explicitly seeks to build bridging capital through
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joint learning, it provides a good foundation and starting place for discussions on the role of policymakers
within the state. Thus, bridging capital builds community capacity to engage in its own advocacy vis-à-vis
the state.
Attention to Equity
While the social capital concept provides a useful understanding of the value of different groups coming
together to do that which they could not accomplish alone, it does not deal directly with the issues of
exactly who is involved in creating the bridging and linking forms of capital. This raises the issue of equity
and representation. Thomas and Twyman (2005) ask explicitly about the voices that are heard and the
issue of the inclusion of traditionally excluded groups in decisionmaking bodies. They articulate the
concept of equity in relation to climate change adaptation processes this way:
Therefore equity in the context of climate change outcomes ought to be much more than simply
ensuring that the vulnerable are treated fairly and buffered from unduly bearing the burdens of
impacts. It should relate to a wide range of issues including: decision-making processes—who
decides, who responds; frameworks for taking and facilitating actions; relationships between the
developed and developing world; and also to relationships between climate change impacts and
other factors that affect and disturb livelihoods.
While they are not addressing directly the issue of bridging and linking capital, they are talking about
creating new “social spaces” (headroom) in which decisions about what to do about GCC at the local
level can be debated. They point to the need for these spaces to “retain principles of equity and social
justice” at their core. They conclude by pointing out the need for careful facilitation of the process: seeing
a role for outsiders in asking questions and guiding debate about who should be around the table. The
idea of outsiders playing this role is echoed in a manual on “people-centered” advocacy (VeneKlasen and
Miller, 2007), which focuses not just on getting community issues to the table but “enlarging” the table to
include more voices, especially those that are traditionally un- or under-represented.
Thus, efforts to create bridging and linking capital should not only consider the various kinds of networks
that need to be developed but also ensure that “the poor” are not merely referred to in terms of being
“beneficiaries” but also included around the decisionmaking table in tangible ways. This points to the
need for intentional longstanding processes to ensure greater participation of all groups.
Conflict Resolution Mechanisms
A final point related to the development of the social infrastructure required to enhance community
adaptation to climate change concerns the need, within actions that focus on creating bridging and linking
capital, to set up mechanisms to deal fruitfully with conflict. We focus on this for two distinct reasons.
The first reason that conflict resolution skills will be necessary is because one of the effects of GCC is
expected to be heightened tensions and conflicts over scarce resources. Nearly all the literature on GCC
points to this seeming inevitability, with some arguing that even mean temperature changes are likely to
lead to more conflict in local settings (Burke et al., 2009). This implies that the creation of new social
spaces will be done, increasingly, in the context of ongoing conflict among participants. Thus, it will
require skill to both create the spaces (creating safety for groups in conflict so they can come together)
and to deal with conflicts that will arrive once people come into them.
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A second reason why these skills will be necessary concerns the issues of power and equity, raised
previously. Building trust, overcoming fear, and enabling decisionmaking within groups in which power
imbalances exist requires an attention to how power is being used to silence or exclude, to name it and to
address it. These issues are often overlooked by program evaluators guided through technical expertise,
but with attention are found to play an essential part in the sustainability of social development efforts
(Sarriot and Jahan, 2010; Sarriot, 2002).
The fields of conflict transformation, adult education, and team building contain a variety of tools and
processes that must be brought to bear to enable these groups to organize and move ahead. The
existence of external facilitators that will bring new perspectives and approaches to newly forming groups
will be an important element of external support to local adaptation efforts and should be a priority for
donors.
Building Social Infrastructure—The “Nonnegotiable”
In considering these points it is clear that an investment in social infrastructure will be a long-term process
and require a significant amount of process facilitation in many local communities around the world. As
Ebi and Semenza (2008) note: “Preparing for and effectively responding to climate change will be a
process, not a one-time assessment of risks and likely effective interventions.” Given that the current
“development deficit” in many communities will lead to greater vulnerability under the local effects of
GCC, we should begin to immediately fund efforts to begin to create/mobilize bridging and linking social
capital. In the next section we lay out some nonnegotiables concerning in what areas that investment
should start. We hasten to add that such efforts should not be seen as projects but should allow for
flexible engagement over a longer period of time. They should be seen as investments in current
development deficits as well as investments in enhancing adaptive capacity in the face of GCC. (If quick
fixes got us to the current situation, is it not time to try a sustainable development model to respond to the
greatest unsustainability challenge of our day?)
So where do we begin? How do we start to think about how to actually build this infrastructure?
There are few fully formed models that address all these issues comprehensively, especially for the
creation of linking capital at the district level, but there are a multitude of sectoral projects and programs
that provide demonstration that such approaches can work in addition to a substantial learning basis.
Discussion of these models goes beyond the scope of this paper, but some leads based on our
experience, primarily but not exclusively in community health, are presented in the textbox below.
Promising Practices in Building Social Infrastructure
Mosley and Lozare (2008) provide a useful ‘leadership development’ approach. Other approaches
include Partner Defined Quality (Save the Children, 2010) and numerous international communitybased experiences (Ricca and Morris, 2010; Sarriot and Jahan, 2010; Sarriot, 2006). See Citizens in
Action: Making Peace in the Post-Election Crisis in Kenya—2008 by George Wachira et al. (2010) for
an example that is at a level somewhat above district-level problem solving. Other examples include
NGO/state collaboration in Northern Iraq (unpublished/personal communication between authors and
3D Security initiative staff).
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Despite the lack of many practical implementation approaches, we would like to return to some critical
points we believe must be part of any efforts to develop approaches to building bridging and linking
capital.
Focus on Information for Decisionmaking
As noted previously, the local collection and use of primary data—both qualitative and quantitative—must
form the basis for building decision networks. In fact, it is an oft violated rule that the only data worth
collecting are to guide decisionmaking. The specific kinds of information to be collected should be
prioritized but also negotiated in each setting to ensure maximum relevance. The food/livelihood security
approaches provide a useful starting place for answering information needs, including by more
aggressively obtaining local information. 10
F
This returns us to several points raised earlier about who should be around the table, the size of the table,
and the role of participants. There is a need to explicitly focus on equity issues in forming groups and
inviting participation, and we would suggest an important role for outsiders in challenging groups about
this and in ensuring full participation of all members.
Our own experience has shown us that power imbalances in groups must be acknowledged and
managed appropriately. If decisions are to be made that represent the needs of all participants, then
appropriate processes must be in place to ensure that. Building facilitative capacity that includes tools to
raise voices and deal with conflict will be critical to ensuring that it is not merely the voices of the powerful
that are incorporated into the decisions.
Time, Consistency, and Unity of Purpose
Time is a fundamental ingredient widely mistreated by project approaches. Some learning and key
processes build and solidify over time, while projects are frequently operating on start-stop modes, which
bear substantial opportunity costs in terms of human development (Shediac-Rizkallah and Bone, 1998;
Witter and Adje, 2007). A review of Noraid health sector development projects argues that less successful
and less sustainable projects are more likely to receive longer funding (Catterson and Lindahl Claes,
2003). In our experience on the evaluation of sustainability of community health interventions, there are
first indications that minimal investments maintained over time can contribute substantially to sustaining
social development processes and outcomes.
Time in itself does not suffice to ensuring progress in the building of human resiliency; two related
concepts are essential and have received substantial attention in the management literature, but
surprisingly little in the development and climate change literature:

Unity of purpose refers to multiple actors focusing on common goals, which can be made
possible by the creation of social space and information systems discussed previously.
10
The Rapid Household Survey Handbook (Davis et al., 2009) provides a useful starting place for developing
quantitative information collection methods. Other tools exist for qualitative methods, including Participatory Learning
and Action—PLA (Freudenberger, 1999). Community-based monitoring systems and surveillance (nutritional and
epidemiological) all have their set of challenges but have been implemented successfully in a number of settings.
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Hurry Up Slowly—Building Social Infrastructure
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
Consistency of purpose refers to maintaining focus and commitment to key issues over time.
The world of development is notably falling short on this fundamental principle. Some exceptions
are obvious, such as national immunization programs and recent efforts to bring ITN technology
to the fight against malaria. At the local level, however (think district and below), both national and
international actors can be involuntarily disruptive. This is most easily demonstrated by the
absence of actionable information at those local levels of interaction with communities (Sarriot et
al., 2008; Davis et al., 2009).
Clarity of Outcomes
As we have argued throughout this document, the development of social infrastructure is not for the sole
purpose of preparing to react to the effects of climate change. There exists a large development deficit
that technology and know-how transfer will not fill. We believe that the initial efforts to create social capital
should focus on two distinct outcomes:

As noted previously, initial bridging capital efforts might focus on creating learning about
adaptation strategies already in place to face uncertainty.

Initial data collection efforts and decisions should focus on identifying levels and then trends in
food insecurity in communities with an eye to setting targets and developing plans to reduce it.
Again, the food security model we are proposing provides a holistic approach to thinking about
community health with its focus on food production, wages, markets, and health and infectious
diseases. With data on these issues in hand, and with an analysis of the meaning and
classification of “vulnerability” in the community, emerging groups can develop plans to reduce
food insecurity in the short to medium term. 11
F
These outcomes are of immediate relevance: build a knowledge base, bring people together, and focus
on using information to create plans based on locally available resources. Over the longer term the
development of the disciplines of data analysis will lead to an ability to respond to the effects of GCC.
Thus, focusing on today’s needs prepares the way enhanced adaptive capacity tomorrow:

A community active in examining information and making decisions to enhance its own welfare
will be far better positioned to examine climate variability data, surveillance information, and
evidence of climate impact on crop, health, and livelihood.

As basic health, livelihood, and human development indicators over time improve, the physical
condition of communities will also position them to be more resilient to the shocks of climate
change.
11
More detailed discussion of metrics and their production is required but can be informed by recent literature
(Devereux et al., 2004).
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Hurry Up Slowly—Building Social Infrastructure
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Conclusions and Discussion Questions
No one trying to tackle the complexity of Global Climate Change, particularly in the context of ongoing
development challenges is going to believe in rapid, simple, and easy fixes. One might argue that the
culture of easy fixes is partly to blame for anthropogenic Climate Change. By reviewing the literature
available to date, and mapping out scenarios for impact of GCC on local vulnerable communities, as well
as types of adaptation processes (or lack thereof) that can be promoted in these communities, we have
identified three salient ideas, which we suggest should guide new efforts to build adaptive
capacity/resiliency at local levels:
1. A lack of local, sustainable community development associated with a poor social infrastructure
represents the most widely shared source of insecurity and inadaptability among poor
communities of developing countries.
2. Even context-specific, hard adaptation strategies will be hindered in their effectiveness and
impact in the absence of effective development processes focused on soft adaptation.
3. In the face of uncertainty, progressiveness, complexity, and randomness of GCC threats,
sustainable adaptation processes should emphasize the building of a responsive and capable
social infrastructure. We suggest that proper respect for time as a factor of social processes, unity
and consistency of purpose demonstrated through appropriate local information systems and
metrics, and equity in bringing stakeholders around decisionmaking processes will be central to
these efforts.
We presented these analyses to stimulate debate and action. Leaving aside for a minute “how things are
done in the business of development” to focus on what is really required, we submit the following
questions:
1. We emphasized the importance of food security systems, including livelihood and basic health
measures at the local level. As a development community, we have grown reticent to providing
some of this information at the local level. What are the essential information needs to be met
through the routine data systems, local surveys, surveillance, etc.?
2. What role is there for mentors/coaches of adaptation processes if local ownership is to be
fostered? Would that be the role of development professionals and agencies as outsiders, and
can we even think of different ways to engage in development practice if adaptation and building
resiliency are critical concerns?
3. We have talked about a long-term process. How should we think about the timeline to put this
social infrastructure into place?
The final question is common to all discussion groups:
4. What innovative proposition would you put forth to advance adaptation to Global Climate Change
among vulnerable communities of developing countries?
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8B
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